Vennira Aadai Nirmala

Vennira Aadai Nirmala Biography

Vennira Aadai Nirmala is a former actress associated with south Indian cinema in the classic era of 1960s and 1970s. She predominantly worked in Tamil cinema playing the lead role opposite all leading male stars of the era, and in Malayalam cinema, her name was credited as Ushakumari. She played character roles since late 1990s, and was quite active in the film scene till 2010. She also appeared in a couple of Tamil TV soaps, and was most recently seen in Deivamagal aired on Sun TV during 2013-2018. She has also appeared in a few Telugu and Kannada films. She is also a trained dancer who owns a dance school. In movies she has done several dance related roles. She hosted the show, “ Konjum Salanagai” for Doordarshan.

Vennira Aadai Nirmala hails from Kumbakonam of Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. She was born on 27 June 1948. Nirmala belongs to an elite orthodox ‘Aranmanai ‘ family in Kumbakonam. Her father Balakrishnan was a patron of arts, and supported her to pursue a career in arts field. When he arranged her Bharatnatyam classes, he faced resistance from conservative society in which they were living. In fact she joined film industry so that she could gain recognition in dance forms through cinema, one of the biggest entertainment medium.

C. V. Sridhar’s Tamil film - Vennira Aadai in 1965 marked her debut in films and after that ‘Vennira Aadai’ tag got permanently added to her name. She has appeared in over 200 films in Tamil and acted in around 50 films in Malayalam with the screen name Usha Kumari. She has been paired with Sivaji Ganesan, MGR, Gemini Ganesan, Ravichandran etc in Tamil cinema, and has also worked with Rajinikanth and Kamal Hassan. She also has written several short stories published in leading magazines. She has also choreographed and performed many ballets, and produced a few television series for Doordarshan.

Published: January 14, 2019

Updated: January 14, 2019